More places offered at Churchill uni campus

Federation University Australia says a big increase in first-round offers for university places shows it has improved tertiary opportunities for students in Gippsland.

First-round offers were released on Friday, and the university says it offered about 40 per cent more places at the Churchill campus than the year before.

Federation University Australia was created when the University of Ballarat took over the Monash Gippsland campus and changed its name.

The university's Andrew Smith says the jump in offers shows the new institution makes tertiary courses more accessible.

"We've changed the way in which we evaluate student applications through VTAC [the Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre]," he said.

"We changed the way that we run our admissions process and that's enabled us to make a lot more offers to local students than has been done in the past, which means there's going to be a lot more students on the Gippsland campus."